This woman calls Ruth Bader Ginsburg ‘bubbie’

“To me she is Bubbie. Bubbie with whom I spend most High Holy Days...Bubbie who loves going to the movies. Bubbie at whom I get a kick out of poking fun. Just a Bubbie like any other."

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Updated: JULY 8, 2018 17:37
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (photo credit: JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS)
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
(photo credit: JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS)
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg may be known for her role in the highest court in the US, but she’s also a doting grandmother, or “bubbie,” in Yiddish, as her granddaughter Clara Spera calls her.
Spera, a Harvard Law graduate and clerk for a federal judge in New York, appears with Justice Ginsburg in the new documentary about her life, “RBG,” and wrote an essay about her grandmother in the June\July issue of Glamour.
“To me she is Bubbie,” Spera wrote. “Bubbie with whom I spend most High Holy Days. Bubbie who took me to see The Book of Mormon, where we both laughed until we cried. Bubbie who loves going to the movies. Bubbie at whom I get a kick out of poking fun. Just a Bubbie like any other.”
Spera wrote about how Ginsburg inspired her to become a lawyer and aspire to be the best.
She celebrated her third birthday at the Supreme Court in 1993, shortly after Ginsburg was sworn in, “because she wanted me to know, from the age of three, that my grandmother, my Bubbie, worked there, and that I shouldn’t consider anything out of my reach.”
At nine, Ginsburg took Spera to hear her speak at a women’s college. “I’m sure it was…motivated by a desire to show me that supportive spaces dedicated to the academic and social advancement of women existed,” Spera wrote.
During law school, Spera tried not to ask her grandmother too many questions, but once asked her about her opinion in a voting rights case. Spera said that she has “learned from her focus on consensus building and her appreciation for measured improvement over time…Her work and her friendships – like with the late Justice Antonin Scalia – have inspired me to listen to those I may disagree with and to find areas where we can build together.”
As for Ginsburg’s more recent celebrity status, nicknamed “Notorious RBG,” after rapper Biggie’s “Notorious B.I.G.,” Spera said it rose as she was in law school, and she finds it “equally strange and touching” to see young women asking Ginsburg for a hug.
Ginsburg visited Israel last week to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Genesis Foundation, for her work for gender equality.
“I am a judge, born, raised and proud of being a Jew,” Ginsburg said. “The demand for justice, for peace and for enlightenment runs through the entirety of Jewish history and Jewish tradition. I hope in all the years I have the good fortune to continue serving on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and courage to remain steadfast in the service of that demand.”
 
Maayan Hoffman contributed to this report.